Denial Smells Like Lavender

• Sheik Hess-Louis, Fine Arts, University of Delaware

• Brandan Henry, Department of Art and Design, University of Delaware

How far would you go in order to hide the truth? Would you be willing to convince those around you, and even go as far as to convince yourself, to escape from what is true? “Denial Smells Like Lavender” is a project that explores the repercussions of denying your truest self. In discovering I was a lesbian, I realized that I had previously spent a lot of time dancing around the fact that I was, in fact, a lesbian. I was blinded by compulsory heterosexuality and filled my own head with lies: that I didn’t like girls, that I did like guys, that I could see myself getting married and living the rest of my life with a man, but not a woman. Upon the enlightenment of my sexuality, I was struck with something I wasn’t expecting – grief. I grieved what could have been, had I just continued to pretend I was straight. I grieved the little girl who was once pure in the eyes of her God, now a creature of sin in the eyes of the church. I grieved all of the time that I spent pretending to be someone that I really wasn’t. This grief is what inspired and formed the basis of my project. The project features a physical series of five mixed media pieces, each of them representative of a stage of grief – and explores themes of femininity, religion, and internal struggle. Using printmaking, painting, poetry, and mosaic, the mixed media methods used to create visual chaos is representative of the overwhelming feelings that occur during the processing of grief. Through this project, I hope to connect to people who have also denied themselves the experience of living their truest lives, and serve as an example that you can thrive if you live true to yourself.